


What About Hernandez?

by AkemiAsh



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Hernandez Appreciation Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 16:25:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15777759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkemiAsh/pseuds/AkemiAsh
Summary: A look at Neil's journey through the eyes of Coach Hernandez.





	What About Hernandez?

**Author's Note:**

> I saw something on tumblr and...well, I had some time to spear so this was born. Let me know what you think, maybe I'll do some more one shots too. You guys have any prompts or topics you want to see written about? Let me know.

 Hernandez could have never guessed.

Neil Josten had been a black haired, brown eyed, rookie who preferred solitude and quiet to the roar of high school parties and the exuberant players who shared the make-shift exy court Millport High had in the soccer field.

He’d known the look. Neil didn’t change with the other boys, he spoke little and when he did Hernandez knew lies when he heard them. Still, he never asked. It wasn’t his place. He was a damn exy coach and the god damn gym teacher, he was no student counselor. He’d given up on helping people a long time ago. It’s what happens when you work in a high school small enough to collect students from 5 different grades just to make sure the entire building is being utilized to its full potential.

That being said, he knew someone who actually did help people. Who cared and didn’t pry and wouldn’t destroy the boy who always looked like he was bleeding inside.

Hernandez didn’t know what he expected, but he found himself always watching.

When Neil Josten was announced on Friday during the game with the Jackals, he smiled to himself. Noting personally how good the kid had gotten. He didn’t think it was because of him, no not with Coach Wymack and Kevin Day on the team to help the kid along, but he was glad that he’d given that little quiet boy a chance. He was glad Wymack and Kevin were giving him a chance.

And then the interview flipped everything he’d thought he’d known on its ear.

Neil Josten was an instigator. Fucking hell the kid was baiting one of the best players, _“You’re going to eat those words, you’re going to choke on them.”_ Holy shit, who is that boy?! Is that what Coach Wymack taught him? To have a backbone, to stand up for himself.

For a moment he is proud of that boy. He was never going to be must more than Neil Josten’s first Coach, he didn’t kid himself about that, but how many of his players got to sit on the same couch as Kevin Day and Riko Moriyama? None! That’s how fucking many.

When he learns about Seth’s death, he feels a shallow sort of sympathetic grief. At first, he thinks it’s for the boy who died, but he knows that is wrong when he hears that the Foxes will be able to continue with only nine players. Relief is quickly followed by guilt because, fuck…he’d wanted to see how far Neil would go.

And boy, does he.

Hernandez watches every game. He picks up every magazine in the grocery story that mentions the Foxes, he follows Neil’s season as closely as he can.

One day, he turns on the news and it’s a story about the Foxes, more specifically it’s a story about Andrew Minyard, and Hernandez feels sick to his stomach.

He remembered Minyard. The boy who’d swung a goddamned racquet right into Neil’s stomach. Fuck, Hernandez had fucking hated the kid for a while, until he saw, actually saw the kid play. Which let’s be honest, wasn’t often. He was good though, and he was on the Foxes, so there had to be something there, right? Other than the drugs and the fights and the anger management issues. Still, no one deserves this. No one deserved Drake Spear, who’s name is all over the news right along side Minyard’s. Hernandez hopes vehemently that Neil is hopefully helping the kid. He doesn’t exactly know why he hopes it was Neil who the blond bastard trusted, but Hernandez chucks it up to Neil being the only kid he actually knew in the Foxes.

He fells horrible about the harassment they are getting. He also feels horrible when he sees the number 4 on Neil’s bruised face. He is bruised, despite the make-up, Hernandez had seen too many of those growing up in a small town than he could count. He recognizes it and he’s so confused. It wasn’t the Foxes, couldn’t have been. Wymack would never allow it. Not to mention the red hair and blue eyes. He’d known about the contacts, he recognized it before, but the hair? Damn.

And then…holy shit the game against the Bearcats.

He sees for the first time why Wymack put up with Minyard. The kid is a brick wall in front of that goal, and Neil? Neil is a rocket on the court, keeping pace and maybe even surpassing Kevin fucking Day. Hernandez hopes for a moment that if he ever meets Neil again, he’ll be remembered. He wonders how he never realized the kid was special? How he never saw what Kevin had obviously seen? What they were all seeing now.  

That’s when the real story broke and suddenly everything made a horrible type of sense.

The Butcher of Baltimore’s son.

Nathaniel Weninski.

Hernandez doesn’t know what to do with that. There is horror at first, and then weariness and empathy. Later on. Later on, the only thing he can feel is pride. Pride for that broken boy who’d asked if he could join the team despite the fact tryouts had already happened. He had helped someone in the end, hadn’t he? He’d given that kid his first chance to be more than a mobster’s son. A runaway. A homeless child struggling to find reasons to stay alive. He doesn’t know everything, no one does, but they all see the scars on Neil’s face.

Hernandez thinks those marks are badges of his survival. Of how strong he really is. Fuck, that kid is a solider, a gladiator, that short little mouthy bastard is a goddamned Hero and Hernandez will go the rest of his life saying “I was his Coach in High school. I saw that potential in him first.” Even if he can’t claim that right, he will anyways because he’s do damn proud of that boy. He doesn’t even recognize the old Neil anymore.

He wonders if Neil would recognize him, but he honestly isn’t sure he wants to know. Maybe its best to just watch from a distance. The kid has a life to look forward to.

When the Foxes win the championship. Hernandez cries for the first time in nine years. He hugs his wife who’s also crying and they watch the Foxes on tv, they smile and they chant and they throw a fucking party the next day.

He wants to call the kid, wants to offer his own congratulations.

He doesn’t.

He does call Wymack though. He takes comfort in the words Wymack shares with him. _“He’s here because of you, you know. If you hadn’t given him a chance, no one else would have.”_ Throughout the rest of his career, he holds onto that. Especially when scouts suddenly start coming to Millport in search of the next Neil Josten.

It’s only about ten years after the Foxes win the Championships that something unexpected happens.

He’s followed the Foxes for years now. He’s followed Josten for years. He saw him raise as captain, losing in the fall season his first year as captain, only to take the Championships on his last year at Palmetto. He followed him when he was signed by the New York Jaguars, only to be transferred a year later into the Tennessee Vipers.

He’s followed the Minyard-Josten rivalry. Laughing at his tv screen when, smiling, Neil tells the reporters that _“Yeah, he hates me. Doesn’t matter though, we’re teammates on the court.”_ For some reason, like with all of Neil’s lies, even the ones back when he was still coaching the boy, he doesn’t believe a word of it.

When Neil makes Court. Hernandez cries once again.

He watches the National Championships in his livingroom surrounded by everyone he knows and cares for and they fucking lose their collective shit when USA takes the goddamn gold! He laughs like he never has before when he sees Neil rush the goalie, Andrew Minyard and plow into him, taking him to the floor in a wild hug.

He watches the interview with tears in his eyes and everyone pats him on the back while Neil talks a little about how all it took was one caring Coach giving a little kid a chance to make it all the way there.

It’s nearing the end of the school year when Hernandez gets a surprise.

There’s a knock on his door at around nine at night, and he’s beyond confused because, damnit can’t an old man nap on the recliner watching ESPN2 without being interrupted with bullshit?

Except, when he opens the door, he nearly stops breathing.

On his front step wearing a faded out Palmetto Foxes shirt and baggy gray sweatpants, red hair wide, blue eyes shining, smile wide and arrogant, and looking so much older than Hernandez had remembered, despite how often he’s seen that face on tv; is Neil Josten himself. Hernandez can see Minyard standing by a black Maserati behind him, but his focus is all on the boy…no, the man in front of him.

“Neil Josten. Still so fucking short.” Hernandez mutters more to himself, but Neil hears it if the smile on his face is anything to go by. He wants to reach out and hug the man, touch him to make sure he isn’t dreaming. Instead, he holds out his hand.

When Neil grabs it, Hernandez feels his chest expanding with emotions he isn’t willing to show this man standing in front of him in sweats and a smile.

“Hey, Coach. Thanks.” Neil says as they let go of each other’s hands.

And then he walks away.

Hernandez can’t help but watch the boy walk away, and he pictures another image over the expanse of Neil’s back. A kid with ratty clothes and black hair with hunched shoulders and a beat-up duffle bag.

He watches as Minyard gives him a two-finger salute as he gets into the car, and he watches still, when Neil gives a wave of his own and slides into the passenger’s seat. And he’s still watching when the car’s break likes disappear down the road like it was never there.

As he goes back inside and closes the door behind himself, he thinks about Neil’s words.

_“Hey, Coach. Thanks.”_

He wonders for a moment if this is how Wymack gets to feel every day. If it actually feels this good, this satisfying to reach out and pull someone up from the ground, to dust them off and hope that this time they won’t fall down. Hope that this time they can learn to run…maybe even to fly.

There’s a smile on Coach Hernandez’s face as he walks to the living room, only to stop at the kitchen counter. On it is a file that he was on the fence about sending out. A kid by the name of Vincent Terry. He’s been taping the kid this past year. He’s not Millport’s best player by far, but he’s got heart on the court. He plays like he wants it, like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted.

Before he really knows what he’s doing he has already pulled up Wymack’s contact on his phone.

When he sends the videos he has of Vincent, he thinks about Neil Josten.

And a simple _“Hey, Coach. Thanks.”_  

With a sharp bark of a single laugh, he debates whether Neil said ‘Coach’ as a sign of respect or because he’d forgotten Hernandez’s name.

Oh, well.

It doesn’t really matter, now does it.


End file.
